


Inkwell

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Collection, During Canon, F/M, Nathalie Sancoeur-centric, Slow Burn, Some Plot, Wordcount: 100
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26501713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: Their story is told in little fragments strewn across the floor, memories she didn’t know would matter until now.She sits cross-legged with a pen in her teeth adding details to scattered post-it notes, everything she learned in retrospect, trying to make sense of her place in his life.Trying to figure out if this is fate.If this is meaningless.If she’s the catalyst for change or the writer of destiny and if any of that means she can sleep through the night, guiltless and peaceful for the first time in years now that she’s landed in his arms.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 58
Kudos: 90
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	1. Pages

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to challenge myself to write some 100-word Drabbles and it became a narrative because I have no self-control. That said, I have no idea what the update schedule will be for this. I'll go with what feels right.
> 
> Enjoy! I'm posting the first three at once.

At the beginning of the story, Nathalie doesn’t realize how dangerous it is to be here. She walks into his life the way a stranger walks, with tentatively assumed indifference that can only grow an inch or two in either direction. But he is a man frank with his feelings, which makes it difficult to pretend she doesn’t belong, a habit that’s helped her survive her life up to this page. 

Unbeknownst that she is on paper, she doesn't see how likely they are to burn. When fire catches, it will be too late. They are doomed to ash, together. 

  
  



	2. Embrace

She pulls Nathalie into her arms. It’s far more common that those arms are waving around theatrically to the rhythm of her speech, but now they embrace Nathalie tightly, words firing off in thanks faster than they can be processed. Emilie, the walking metaphor she is, has the energy of the sun at all times. She is beaming and burning and right now, she is so close that Nathalie might burst. 

She steps away, revolving to the next planet. 

Then, Nathalie stiffens once again with a chill as Gabriel places a hand on her shoulder, whispers, “Thank you,” and follows. 

  
  



	3. Sleepless

This cup neglects cream and Gabriel notices when she returns how many times in the last two hours she’s risen for a refill.

“I pulled an all-nighter in university  _ once _ and haven’t slept well since,” she tells him dryly. She brings the mug to her lips for a warm and bitter sip. Black coffee reminds her of him. 

Gabriel returns his eyes to his work. “I wish I could offer advice, but many nights I have trouble sleeping myself.” 

“I manage with what little I get.” 

“That’s enough.”

When everything changes tomorrow, sleeping will become even harder for them both.

  
  



	4. Downfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking of posting two of these a day now. We'll see how that goes.

Nathalie stays late. She has a feeling this is the end, and she keeps her distance, eyes on her onyx likeness in the atelier window as a May drizzle pelts the glass.

Gabriel tells her to go home. He doesn’t mean it. 

She knows because he only says it once. 

She knows because her phone lights up in the rain-splashed reflection three hours later, long after she should have been gone and left the loss for him to feel alone.

She knows because the message reads,  _ Come. I need your help. _

In the distance, a match is struck to life. 

  
  



	5. Language

A grieving man forgets his native tongue. He cannot be spoken to even by those he has known all his life. Their words hold as much meaning as the figments of noise produced by the mind in absolute silence. Low frequency hums. Roaring in the dead of night, until it feels his head may rupture.

They cannot understand the language of his pain, that motionless torment. And he cannot discern their words of comfort from static. 

Nathalie doesn’t use words. Grief is too slow, too rigid a trial for her to facilitate. 

She watches Gabriel, wondering how to reach him. 

  
  



	6. Walk

On an overcast morning, Nathalie knocks on his door and says, “Let’s take a walk.” 

They only circulate the yard a dozen or so times. There’s a breeze that day but the air is thick and so they don’t want to stay outside for long. But he pauses before that statue posed among the rose bushes and becomes almost as still as that well-formed stone. Nathalie’s heart could break. She misses the life in his gaze.

He stands there for several minutes. When they step back inside he looks at her gratefully and murmurs that he needed the fresh air. 

  
  



	7. Promise

Gabriel says he’s going to save her. 

It doesn’t come to Nathalie as a surprise as much as it does a revelation, this sort of breaking open of the sky into a firmament of light and promise among the blackness of the unknown. The possibility of  _ everything else _ being lost to save what he holds most dear. It’s the kind of devotion Nathalie could never dream of knowing and spent all her life assuming wasn’t real.

Suddenly, it is before her wearing a shining jewel and a scowl. 

Gabriel says he’s going to save her. 

And fatefully, Nathalie believes him

  
  



	8. Monster

Black-winged butterflies draw his face across the clouds, born from the breath of his first beast whose roars have reverberated through the city streets to make Nathalie’s bones rattle beneath freezing skin. She sits at her desk, watching the footage on her computer. It’s the kind of thing you see in a movie. It doesn’t feel real. 

But it’s real. That’s  _ his _ face in the sky. That’s  _ his _ voice threatening the world beneath him. He has named himself the villain. With time, he will become inveterate. Nathalie keeps her heart firm. 

Pure evil is easier to explain than the truth.

  
  



	9. Flicker

Nathalie sees Emilie for the first time since the fall. If she dreams in whatever magical state she has entered, then they must be pleasant dreams, judging by the soft smile on her lips. She has all the color and grace she did in sound and movement. If she wasn’t in a coffin, no one would know a thing was wrong.

The chill Nathalie expects to run through her bones doesn’t come. She releases the breath on her tongue into the humid air and clips an overgrown branch. A flower lands by her feet, and beside her, Gabriel takes it. 

  
  



	10. Sun

Adrien was close to his mother. He longs for engagement with the world outside this colossal house, and though he rarely experienced it growing up, at least he’d take comfort in her companionship and likeness. She was that which he aspired to be and which kept him content with the disparity. 

Gabriel doesn’t want her to be replaced. He doesn’t want any other light in Adrien’s eye, any other warmth to relieve the chill of loneliness. He tenses when Adrien gives a hug, and Nathalie knows the shame he feels earning the affection that had once been Emilie’s to receive.

  
  



	11. Pages II

Every chapter reads the same. 

Mornings begin early, often before dawn fades in from the horizon, past several hours of restless turning in the dark. Whether the day passes in stagnant normalcy or pages and pages of action fall in between, nothing changes. He is robbed of resolution as his akumas are snatched from the sky in a succession of anticlimaxes Nathalie witnesses from her desk. 

Hope is wrung from the pages. The book’s a wrinkled mess on the ground. A story that never changes is no story at all. 

Nathalie doesn’t know it but she is smeared in ink. 

  
  



	12. Gap

What was it like being trapped in a book? 

What was it like?

She’s trying to remember.

She can’t. 

It keeps her up til two. 

She wants to know.

She wants to describe it.

Write it down.

Like everything else.

But there are so many words on the page sliced in half by ballpoint dashes.

It’s easier to write about not knowing instead.

Maybe it was kind of like dying. The book sailed towards her and there was nothing, or a negative nothing. And then she was back. 

Funny thing is that she really doesn’t mind much. 

So maybe not.

  
  



	13. Keeper

Sometimes he reaches for his ascot and hesitates to move. In moments like that, Nathalie holds her breath. She knows better but she hopes, silently and painfully hopes he’ll lower his hand and remain there in the atelier. She hopes for the beginning of goodbye, for the stack of pages to thin out, for the smallest, quietest step in a new direction, to the outer edges of shadow. One pace this day, one more the next. It’ll take time but she’ll wait, even if the darkness lengthens around his feet. Of course, there’s nothing to wait for. He always goes.


	14. East

There’s one crisp night that draws Nathalie out to her rarely-used balcony with a sweatshirt and a cigarette. She quit smoking ten years ago and intends to keep it that way, but she bought a pack on the way home tonight for reasons she can’t discern as she flicks the lighter and takes the first inhale. 

Her view isn’t great. She faces another building, can barely see anything over it. But she looks East. That’s where he is. And that’s where the sun comes up long after she grinds the cigarette under her slipper and stays waiting for the morning. 

  
  



	15. Figure

He draws Emilie modelling all of his designs. Each of those faceless sketches are blonde and graceful and everything they display never fails to remind Nathalie of the crisp jackets or simple, elegant dresses Emilie once wore. 

Gabriel didn’t use to draw her this much, only when he was designing something  _ specifically _ for her to don. But now she’s everywhere. Nathalie hoped his work would be the one place he didn’t have to feel the pain of missing her, but when she glances at his screen, she’s there in her beautiful, tragic glory.

Never gone. Hanging in the balance forever.

  
  



	16. Attentive

Nathalie has a splitting headache and looking at a screen only makes it worse. She’s at her desk with her face in her hands when the lift delivers him from the other life he leads. 

There’s a pause where he doesn’t move and she slowly raises her eyes enough to give a polite acknowledgement. He’s staring right at her, alarmed. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“You tell me.”

“Did something happen, Sir? I didn’t watch the attack. I needed a break from - my head’s been --”

“I don’t mean with the attack. I mean with  _ you _ .”

She doesn’t know how to respond. 

  
  



	17. Nightmare

It’s lucky Sandboy didn’t reach her. Nathalie can’t imagine what she would have seen if he did. 

It’s better not to think about it.

But she’s her. So she does think about it. A little too much. 

She’s not very fond of snakes, but it wouldn’t have been snakes. That’s silly. 

Hospitals make her feel ill. In fact, she may have had a nightmare that she was trapped in one. 

Seeing her father again would have turned her blood to ice, and only secondly because he’s dead. 

Losing Gabriel.

Being alone.

_ Really _ alone. 

It’s better not to think about it. 

  
  



	18. Embrace II

He smells like the earth. Nathalie leans her face into the side of his head, taking a deep breath, and under her arms he is like stone. She wonders how much pain it takes to paralyze a man, and how much of it she can breathe into her own lungs to keep from weighing him down. 

She may not have hoped for this if she knew it would hurt him this much. Nathalie’s hold tightens. She prays for his relief. She wants her heart to hurt in turn, because nothing worth having is free. 

It all comes at a price.

  
  



	19. Truth

“ _ I understand, Sir _ .”

Her back against the door, Nathalie scolds herself, but it isn’t for lying. That was no lie coming like cement from between her lips, not remotely. Nathalie understands perfectly why he can’t give up; she understands perfectly that he’ll always find a way to hold on tight enough to make his hands bleed; she understands perfectly what it’s like to love somebody so much it kills, to believe you are betraying yourself to let the feeling fade by a single lumen.

She  _ wishes _ she didn’t understand.

But she knows that terrible burden like her own broken heart. 

  
  



	20. Inkwell

Nathalie is

Nathalie wants to 

Nathalie wishes she was

If she hadn’t

This job isn’t what she’d

imagined.

But, yes, of course it isn’t. She spends so much of her time pretending Gabriel

pretending her boss isn’t almost always on the brink of causing the apocalypse.

He came so close and she felt so bad for being relieved but he’s changed his mind again and now she feels

Nathalie feels

Break the mirror

Let you hand bleed

It doesn’t matter

You’re a joke

You’re trapped in this

You were so stupid to

to fall

Write it

to fall in love.


	21. Inkwell II

~~Option 1: Coward~~.

Option 2: Nothing changes. Take care of his life while he’s away and keep your mouth shut. Your heart’s your Achilles Heel. You have the tendency to care too much. Always have. Cared too much right from the start and didn’t know until it was too late and now

Option 3: Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help him. There’s one way to fix all of this. You know that, you’ve always known. You were foolish enough to hope otherwise. You can’t hope anymore. You need to be  _ his _ hope. And that’s the best you’ll ever be.

  
  



	22. Surrender

“Use me,” she says. 

Something flickers in his face, and Nathalie is terrified it’s apprehension. She’s terrified he’ll let this perfect plan be any less perfect because he’d rather not need her. But Nathalie can’t give less than  _ everything _ . Not anymore. If she leaves a single cell of herself behind in the cold of such lonely, tedious hopelessness, then she’ll shatter like ice beneath her own motionless weight. 

This is the only way to be whole.

At last, he says that if everything is going to change, he’ll need a catalyst, and Nathalie knows the light she’d see was fire. 

  
  



	23. Red

She remembers Catalyst, certainly more than other akumas recall themselves. But it’s a  _ feeling _ that comes to mind, more than vision or sound or the weight of the helmet on her head, reddening the darkness of the lair where she was meant to stay. It’s a hunger. A hunger of the mind or the heart or the soul or maybe none of these things. Maybe a hunger of _ something _ that was gifted to her along with the power he’d placed so calmly into her possession, so delicately, after asking, “Are you ready?”, like she could stand to be anything less. 


	24. Awake

It crawls across her skin like static electricity, a quick and searing rush that doesn’t feel right even though she’s never felt it before. 

As if she doesn’t fit in space, the press of air and light and  _ mere existence _ ebbs away for a moment. She’s stranded in a vacuum until it all crashes back. The fur. The window. The feather in her fingers. 

She has a new name but it feels wrong to name something that isn’t meant to last.

Save him first. Then she can make it last. There’s still time.

I am Mayura.

This is the beginning. 

  
  



	25. Symptoms

Tired.

Weak.

Sore throat. Dry. And hot. 

Chest congestion. Only a little (that’s supposed to get worse). 

Dizzy. Head filled with helium. About to float away. 

Weird one: jaw hurts. Maybe. Hard to tell. Everything is at least a little achy. 

Couldn’t walk. Had to be carried. Needed to sit for about forty minutes before enough strength returned to stand up steadily. Had assistance to the atelier. 

Was able to work but head started pounding after looking at the screen for half an hour or so. Kept working anyway. 

Day 1 - Gave back miraculous. He says he’ll sleep on it. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm planning on writing a hundred of these, so we're a quarter of the way through now! I hope you're enjoying. Thanks for reading and remember to comment, please :)


	26. Gratitude

She stands against the sliding door leading out to her balcony with a mug of tea and her brow on the glass, toes curling and uncurling in her slippers as she tries to piece together the last twenty-four hours in her memory. Everything that survives makes it to paper by the end of the night and everything else can be reduced to the feeling of warmth in her chest and cold on her skin, like when he thanked her, genuinely, with a smile she hadn’t seen in ages. And squeezed her hand so tightly it kept her from falling asleep. 


	27. Bloom

“I’ve thought about it. I’m still uncertain.”

He doesn’t look her in the face when he speaks. Nathalie sighs, attempting to expel the weight of fear in her chest that he would make the choice she dreaded most, the choice that forced her to stand idly by, to watch him float and then crash and then burn…

He continues, “I don’t need you to put yourself in more unnecessary harm.”

“No,” she whispers, “but it is no harm to help you, Sir.”

“Promise me?”

She smiles, breaking inside with pain like a flower - alive and beautiful. “With all my heart.”

  
  



	28. Pages III

Ink splashes over every leaf, until she stands in a field of blue paper flowers soaked with the blood raining from her heart. It is a shower of language and desperate wonder overflowing from her veins, pooling on the pages, drowning the words. An overwatered garden that’s had enough. A heartsick goddess pretending not to know where it comes from. 

Look at her, the ink covers every inch of her skin. She is dressed in indigo and she will not rub it away. She finds new flowers to paint. She writes, rewrites the answer until it doesn’t hurt to know. 


	29. Shoulder

She remembers how his gaze once pressed over her like light above a mountain, moments before he offered the power to raise her closer to his burning sky. He is tall and strong and he shakes everything beneath him, but now Nathalie has found wings of her own to carry her as high as he stands. 

Pinning the miraculous above her heart, she walks from the shadows to the light, emerging at his side. A step closer and their arms would touch. They look upon the same little world.

The sun takes her face between its hands and grins. Welcome. 

  
  



	30. Wildfire

When she coughs, it is like choking on air. Pockets of empty space turning to stone in her windpipe. Petrified breath. It scrapes its way up and down, eroding the walls of her esophagus until it is raw and burning, until she doubles over with bulging eyes. Nathalie’s throat convulses, but there is nothing to expel but the air in her lungs. They are slowly taking on the heat. Brittle and dry and too close to the flame. Sharp warmth at the peak of her chest. Then it passes. She huffs at the mirror, wiping the tears from her eyes. 


	31. Predecessor

Pure curiosity compels her to ask Duusu the kind of holder Emilie was. 

She’s witnessed the way Gabriel, in his boundless outrage, his seething pain, speaks to his kwami who dares to see something other than a monster in him, and she cannot imagine the glittering Emilie Agreste being so ferocious in anything but her mirth and brilliance. 

She lowers her voice to ask the peacock kwami, “What was she like?”

Duusu’s dark pink eyes flicker. “Oh, I remember her,” is all she murmurs, like Emilie was a passing star, lost to space and history too distant to dwell on. 

  
  



	32. Lie

“How is your cold?” 

“What?”

Adrien asks again, “Your cold? Better?”

Nathalie sits beside him in the back of the car and cannot immediately answer. Her mind races for a reply through the dark fog quickly spreading. 

“Sounded like a pretty bad cough, but it seems like you’re getting over it.”

A switch flips in her brain and she nods stiffly. “Yes, much better. Maybe it’s allergies. Sometimes my throat gets irritated.” It’s useless to hope she can continue to hide something that so unexpectedly comes and goes. “It’s Spring now.” 

He smiles and looks away, believing her for now. 

  
  



	33. Remorse

Nothing hurts more than the pierce of his cold and livid glare. Nathalie knows it could break her apart if she looks too long. She holds her eyes to the floor in order to survive. 

Stupid woman. Letting a stranger in the house. She knows better. 

When he stops, his anger interrupted by the bloom of a plan in his mind, she exhales in relief. She’ll leave to lick her wounds in solitude when --

“Nathalie?”

“Yes?”

“I…” (He’s just being decent. That’s all.) “I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way. Forgive me,” he gently whispers, holding out his hand. 

  
  



	34. Partner

The heroes have seen the face of Hawkmoth’s ally. In broad daylight, there is a trace of violet to her skin, and she squints at them from behind the snow-white feathers fluttering at the end of her fan. She is quiet and quick. She fails, but not by much. They know a silent killer when they see one.

When it is over and the light fades, he goes to hold her by the arm. She whispers “Fall my feathers” and tries not to fall along with them. But he is there. She will not hit the ground. 

“I’ve got you.” 

  
  



	35. Symptoms II

Fatigued.

Cold. 

Head feels like it’s going to explode. Had to lay it on the desk for fifteen minutes. And. Not. Move.

Cough still dry. Chest burns. Throat soothed by some hot tea with honey. At least for a little while. 

Declined offer to be  ~~ carried ~~ brought to bed. Can stand just fine.

~~ But that was nice ~~ ~~.~~

Worst of symptoms subsided after about three hours. Still exhausted with a migraine but it no longer hurts to breathe. 

He was distracted. Worried. Asked if it was getting worse. 

~~ Yes ~~ ~~.~~

Just need to focus. 

Day 16 - This will all be worth it.

  
  



	36. Blame

Adrien returns to fire at the doorway. His father is a well of fury, blood boiling under his skin as his voice shakes the atrium and the boy standing at its entrance. Nathalie watches with sealed lips and a swell of relief that he is safe, and she knows every word, every admonishment she hears is rooted in unbearable anguish. Gabriel overflows with the flames of guilt which tend to simmer out of view, so deep inside one can barely feel the heat. Now it leaps out into open air. It pretends to be something other than his monstrous shame.


	37. Fantasy

Her imagination betrays her sometimes.

It goes like this: 

She lays in her bed. Looks out a window. Stands in the shower. 

She’s stopped thinking about work for a moment too long. There’s a blank space that needs filling.

Suddenly, and before she can stop it, her mind crashes through a wall she hoped she’d sealed. Behind Nevers and Not evers and Impossibles. 

It’s him. 

He’s happy. 

And it didn’t take a miracle. 

She knows because she’s still there. She’s close by. Her hand is on his heart, and his eyes are 

They’re so full of

The opposite of pain. 


	38. Spinning

Emilie grabbed her shoulder once. Hard. Nearly pushed Nathalie down. She faced forward with unfocused eyes so unlike the sharp-cut gems normally arresting the light. Nathalie hadn’t known how to respond. 

“Sorry,” mumbled Mrs. Agreste with a few slow blinks. “Dizzy spell.” 

Nathalie remembers this as she sinks against the wall, suddenly uncertain which direction she’s facing. The room’s gone dim. Darkness splatters across her vision like pinpoints of ink. When she closes her eyes, she can’t even tell how gravity pushes against her. She whirls through space. 

Gabriel’s hand slides against her back. “Nathalie!”

“Sorry,” she sighs, “Dizzy spell.” 


	39. Clash

_"I'm fine."_

She’s tangled in the ropes of this dangerous pull of emotions. They tumble in the center of her chest within a brooch that’s hot to the touch. Everything else around her is so frigid that she begins to shiver, teeth rattling behind grimacing lips.

Wrath and chagrin that stings the space between her collarbones at war with deep blue despair, the weight of the ocean in so small a space she slumps even lower. She can’t decide which is worse. She can’t decide which she’d rather see emerge the victor. 

In his eyes now, there is only misery.

  
  



	40. Ache

She used to take the stairs up to her apartment. Today the chimes of the elevator drill into her skull. When she arrives home, she drops to the floor, panting for breath. Gabriel asked her to stay over tonight, but she didn’t want to worry Adrien any further by letting him believe she couldn’t even make it home.

She feels like she has made it _barely_. 

Nathalie cries. She cries because everything hurts and she can’t even sort it out in her head. It’s a blur of pain she’ll sleep off on the couch because the bed’s too far away. 

  
  



	41. Stray

Nathalie can’t name the moment she realized she’d fallen. Gravity pulled her down and she didn’t even feel it until it was far too late, until she was soaring towards the center of the planet to be buried in magma and madness. She believed she’d leaped with a harmless heart into a world like any other. In truth, it weighed so heavy in her chest that it dragged her underground. 

Respect, she’d said. Admiration, she’d said. That was the plan. Those were the words in her head at the beginning. 

Now she’s being crushed beneath a word she can’t write.

  
  



	42. Wreckage

History repeats itself. Hawkmoth follows suit.

Certain akumas return in greater wrath than they’d first wreaked. Orange skies and raining ash and rumbling of the earth. Paris might be buried beneath a mountain of things he’s destroyed, over and over again. Nathalie’s darkest fears are not for the city which could be wiped clean, but for its assailant whose heart is ravaged beyond repair. 

This akuma she has seen before with violence she has not, exhibiting the depths his desperation has reached. She wonders how much more broken he can be. 

She’ll do everything she can to never find out.

  
  



	43. Medicine

With a hand above his heart, she tells him, “ _The future isn’t set in stone_.”

He watches her intently. His trembling fingers clasp around her own. “How do you know?”

It is because he seeks a power so mighty it can change the fabric of reality, make such a specific, decisive change, that perhaps nothing else will tell the difference but the universe that lives in him, when its blazing, brilliant star returns.

But he doesn’t need to hear this. She can see it in his eyes. Instead, she wraps her arms around him and he melts into her touch.

  
  



	44. Separation

For three days, she doesn’t see him. They’re supposed to be in Japan. She knows he wanted time to be with Emilie. Uninterrupted grief. Uninterrupted promises. His mind on her alone. Nathalie knows that’s why she’s been sent away.

It’s not because she needs to rest.

It’s not because this is the only way to make her truly listen. 

It has nothing to do with her at all. She sits in the same compartment of everything else that isn’t Emilie. 

Sits there with the entire world. 

That’s why she  _ almost _ doesn’t answer when he calls to ask “How are you?”


	45. Pretense

Fresh air helps her one day. She sits on the back steps gradually swallowing the Spring morning down her throat of sandpaper, fingers flying across her tablet keys as she drafts an email on her lap. Work doesn’t feel normal anymore. Her new normal is messy and loud and painful and a secret. Work is a distraction. Work is a veil she wears to look the way she used to look without it. Her new normal stole her skin. She mops up blood and ink with scraps of paper and blankets of work before anyone else can see the stains.


	46. Fading

Nathalie wakes up in the middle of the night for the third time this week, unable to breathe.

After she pushes herself upright, coughs her lungs into use again, a spike of ire pitches upward through her body, and she nearly leaps out of bed. To wait out the discomfort long enough to fall back asleep feels so impossible now that she would rather remain stubbornly awake through the rest of the night. 

As if to punish herself for the pain. 

But she can’t get up.

She’s _ so tired _ . 

She can barely keep her eyes open.

She can barely

write.

  
  



	47. Anniversary

It’s only been a year.

To her, the household seems like it has been lost in limbo for a length of time too uncertain to guess. Seasons blur through her memory as if more than four have passed. Her own heart became iron when she opened her eyes to see that they’ve only fallen so far into the dark after all.

She doesn’t expect Gabriel to show. Of all days in the year, surely this would be the one he’d make himself most scarce.

But he appears at her side in the late morning, stone-faced, yes, but  _ there _ . But  _ real _ .


	48. Fixed

“I couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t understand.” 

It takes some prying to know what he means, to know how terrified he is of Adrien’s compassion, to know that what scares him most of all is the possibility that Emilie, like all living things, won’t last forever. Even the sun will die eventually. Adrien is finding ways to live in the dark.

“He thought she could be replaced. He doesn’t know what’s best for himself.” 

Nathalie is not surprised by what he says. She nods at Gabriel wordlessly.

But the truth is merciless, no matter how many times she hears it. 

  
  



	49. Inkwell III

Nathalie knows what she has to believe in. 

Everything he believes in. 

He is living stone and he does not change. 

She must be the water running around him. The light on his surface. The wind on his back.

Nothing more. 

You are nothing more. 

You are breaking down and it makes you a burden. It makes you solid rock, and you weigh on him.

You change his perspective.

You will press him underground.

You will drag him down with you.

You know exactly what he needs because he tells you all the time. 

_ Her _ .

Don’t get in the way. 

  
  



	50. Fuzzy

She can’t really remember what happened after he akumatized her again.

There’s nothing in her head. It’s just

pain. 

Red light and 

pain.

She’s in his arms when it all starts to flicker back into view. 

She doesn’t understand. 

He’s supposed to be 

somewhere else

leading an army. 

She was supposed to make that possible.

She’s deadweight in his hold. The world passes like rushing liquid, carrying glittering fragments of light above her head.

There’s a spot of heat on her chest and she can hardly lift her fingers to graze it. 

Useless.

“Gabriel,” she whispers.

What has she done?

  
  



End file.
